Page 11 of Again, Scoundrel

Miss Goodwin’s skin was green. Her cheeks were hollow. And her bosom was unceremoniously smashed into that dress.

It didn’t matter who she’d been three years ago. Or who he’d been, for that matter. He was no longer the wide-eyed young buck she’d met on that long ago night either. The one about to set sail for fate and fortune, excited for a new career and a new life.

The last three years had disillusioned him with the world and its mercenary need for more. More wealth, more power, more control. He grimaced.

“Is something amiss, my lord?” Lady Catherine asked.

“No.”

It was the first word he’d said to her all evening. He was being a cad, and he knew it. But he didn’t care. He was openly staring at Miss Goodwin now, willing her to look down the long table at him. But she resolutely cast her eyes away.

Ignore her, he commanded himself again.

But he couldn’t.

The moment dinner concluded, he stood and made a beeline for Miss Goodwin.

Chapter

4

Violet couldn’t have been more thankful for dinner to be over. That brute Alistair Crawford had stared at her all night long.

Part of her was glad he didn’t recognize her. His eyes, which she’d remembered as warm and passionate, were now stony and cold. And his lips—the ones she’d dreamed about for three years to her own chagrin—were not sensual and beckoning any longer. They were set in an angry frown, except for when they were gulping down wine.

And the looks he shot her down the table this evening were definitely not the ones of passion they’d shared before. Now he looked at her like she was some kind of cretin. Simply because she wore a dress that was more modest than others and her hair wasn’t piled on top of her head and adorned like some absurd spun sugar creation.

Is being different so much of a crime?

She supposed it was, here in the ton. In this respect, New York society was bad, but London was even worse. The need for its members, especially its female members, to conform so completely to its set of social niceties and hierarchical rules was one of the reasons she’d been reluctant to return to London.

But Catherine had requested her presence for the season, and Violet knew too well how hard it was to restart one’s life after the shock of a loved one’s sudden death. If Catherine wanted her to be here, she would be.

She supposed, too, that the fact he didn’t recall her ought to be comforting. She was different now. On purpose. And in large part because of him.

Or, more precisely, because of the havoc he had wreaked in her body all those years ago on the balcony. A havoc she’d so desperately wanted to repeat that she’d searched for him at every ball, salon, and dinner for the rest of her mini season. And that she’d sought out in New York when her real season began, with disastrous consequences.

And he hadn’t even remembered her!

That much had been clear in the few short sentences he’d deigned to utter before stalking away.

Poor Catherine. Seated next to the cad for the whole of the dinner party, during which he’d said at most one word to her.

She pushed him from her mind and, when dinner concluded, rose with a sigh of relief. She’d follow the other ladies into the salon for tea and a hand of whist, and then she could escort Catherine back to Chester House.

Violet had just turned the corner into the hallway, the last in the line of women departing the dining room, when she felt a hand grip her elbow from a darkened room and tug.

She gasped, startled, as she was pulled into an empty library and the door shut behind her. She stilled in the darkness, her nose twitching at the familiar, virile scent that enveloped her. The base layers were exactly the same as they had been three years ago, balsam, sea wind, and adventure.

How, she wondered, could a man smell of such things?

But the top notes were different. She wrinkled her nose. Now he smelled of whisky and wine, too, and it was all too easy to understand how he had attained that particular scent.

A gas lamp flickered on in the darkness, and she turned to find Alistair Crawford standing behind her, as she knew she would. A tingle shimmied up her spine at his nearness, which she ignored. The man was dissolute, and she shouldn’t be alone with him.

“Lord Alistair,” she said, keeping her voice to a low whisper lest she call unwanted attention to their presence together in the library. “What do you want?”

“I prefer captain to lord,” he said automatically, as if he’d uttered the words a thousand times before, but then paused. “Actually, I don’t. Not anymore.”